Category Archives: People I Loathe

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After putting a clean folded towel and washcloth at the foot of the freshly made bed, I came downstairs and walked into the kitchen.

“You’re all set,” I told George Clooney. Then I opened the refrigerator and grabbed the orange juice. The lightness of the carton startled me. “I’m almost out of orange juice,” I said to George Clooney. “I think I’ll save the last glass for breakfast tomorrow. I like to have orange juice with my breakfast.”

Three or four medium oranges will yield 8 ounces of juice.

“I’m not a big orange juice guy,” George Clooney said, never looking up from his blackberry.

“Oh, I am,” I said. “I’m a huge orange juice guy. I like it with my breakfast,” I said. To George Clooney.

He looked up from his ‘crackberry,’ puzzled. “Yeah, you just said that.”

George Clooney was staying at my house. He had meetings in Tysons Corner that day, and was catching an early flight out of Reagan National the following morning. Rather than book a hotel, he was crashing in my spare bedroom.

“It’s an O.J. thing; you wouldn’t understand,” I told George Clooney. “Well, I’m turning in. If I don’t see you in the morning,” I said to George Clooney, “have a great trip.”

We shook hands and I went up for bed.

At around 4am, I heard George Clooney’s alarm sound. I was half asleep as I heard him get ready and brush his teeth. I must have been drifting in and out of sleep, because I had a dream that the person brushing their teeth in my bathroom was my neighbor, Kevin. But it was George Clooney.

My alarm went off around six. I got up, bleary and with a bad taste in my mouth, but nothing that a little orange juice wouldn’t cure. In the kitchen, there was a note.

Earl,

Good seeing you again. Thanks for letting me crash in your spare bedroom.

Best,

George (Clooney).

Hmm, I thought, and went to the fridge. The orange juice carton was gone. In a panic, I looked over at the trashcan. The empty carton was on the very top. A glass that obviously had orange juice in it earlier was in the sink.

Before there was TMZ, there was Earl the Butcher, sifting through all of the celebrity gossip and urban wives thingies. Here are ten of the top celebrity rumors I heard back in the day:

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Mike D Died

I was in fifth grade when this one broke. For those of you too young to remember the Beastie Boys back then, let me make this comparison: Hip Hop losing Mike D would be like if the ’99 Lakers lost Travis Knight. It hit the community hard. Of course, they revived him just before Paul’s Botique, thus, “I’m Mike D and I’m back from the dead.”

Rumor: TRUE

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Mike D and Screech are Brothers

I was a little older when this one broke. Mike D had died a few years back. Then somebody finally made the connection:

Michael Diamond and Dustin Diamond are related. And it checks out. Turns out they were the offspring of a couple named Neil and Blood.

Rumor: TRUE

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Madonna Peed on her Athletes’ Foot

I didn’t want to believe this one when it surfaced; unfortunately it’s absolutely true.

In related news, I told my wife I had Athletes’ Chest. Turns out she still doesn’t believe the rumor.

Rumor: TRUE

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Eddie Murphy Picked Up a Man, Baby

Eddie Murphy, who dropped the word “faggot” a combined 54 times in Delirious and Raw, and did a whole set on how much pussy he gets, picked up a tranny prostitute? No way. Oh, yes way. It happened. Eddie pulled up the skirt and a different kind of “big brown shark came.”

Rumor: TRUE

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Richard Gere Stuck a Gerbil Up His Bunghole

Oh, totally true. A friend of mine’s aunt is a nurse at the emergency room in Missouri where Cindy Crawford rushed him after it happened. The gerbil was shaved bare, declawed, and nicknamed “an Officer.”

Rumor: TRUE

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Walt Disney was Cryogenicaly Frozen

This one seems almost too mundane to even be a rumor. He is indeed frozen in a chamber buried underneath Magic Kingdom. The part that is in question is whether execs really woke him up for a screening of the rough cut of Tron. I doubt it.

He sleeps in an hyperbaric chamber, speaks in a normal voice when no one is around, bought the Elephant Man’s skull, suffers from vitiligo and called it Splitsville once and for all with Macaulay Culkin All true. Every last one of them.

Rumor: TRUE

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Jamie Lee Curtis is a Hermaphrodite

JLC ’s got more junk in the front than she does in the trunk. Freak.

Rumor: TRUE

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You Can't Reach What Isn't There

Marilyn Manson Removed a Rib So He Could Suck His Joint

Fo Shizzle: Marilyn did it. The man underwent a 30k surgery so he could service his own iPud. Who knew it was just a simple rib standing between me, third base and me? Brutal.

I’m not talking about before Sixth Sense. Any cute kid can be in the movies for a second. The jinx began right after. And a jinx doesn’t just ruin himself, he infects the people around him with the failure virus as well.

– Sixth Sense, 1999. Biggest movie of the summer. Gets a bunch of Oscar nods. And yet, Bruce Willis goes on to The Story of Us, Rugrats the Movie, and a move called What Just Happened? I was gonna ask you the same thing, Bruce. M. Night Shamalama goes on to make a string of craptastic films, each worse than his last.

The Haley Joel Osment Effect is born.

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– Pay It Forward, 2000. Kevin Spacey wins an Oscar from American Beauty, and Helen Hunt, one with As Good as it Gets. But this one tanks. Spacey embarks on a journey that includes Superman(how do you fuck that one up?), and one where he plays Bobby Darin. Helen Hunt continues to take Hollywood by storm with Castaway (who was she in that?), and What Women Want. You remember the movie where Mel Gibson can hear women’s thoughts, but you never saw it. And yet, somehow HJ walks away unscathed.

The Haley Joel Osment Effects takes on the acronym “H-JOE” and is referred to by government officials as “a concern.”

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– AI, 2001. After taking down two of Tinseltown’s greatest stars, Osment sets his sights on the biggest man in show-biz, Steven Spielberg. He comes in with Saving Private Ryan, and leaves with Catch Me if You Can, the Terminal, andWar of the Worlds. Crap, Crap, and Crap.

H-JOE is declared an epidemic.

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– Jungle Book 2, 2003. I can’t blame Haley Joel for this fiasco.

– And later in 2003, Secondhand Lions. Robert Duval’s notable titles after working with Osment: Godfather, the video game. Nice. And Michael Caine, didn’t he die right after that movie?

Moments After this Picture was Taken, Barton’s Agents were Informed She had Been Written Off of the OC. H-JOE!

And there the well ran dry for HJ. He finally became a victim of the same H-JOE that claimed the professional lives of so many of his colleagues. You haven’t heard from him lately because he’s chosen not to act so he could focus on his studies. Right, and I’ve chosen not to get laid because I’ve been focusing on my masturbating.

I know a lot of child stars fade quietly into obscurity. But only Haley Joel Osment has the honor of saying the last time he saw his name in print, it started the sentence: “…lost control of his 1995 Saturn on his way home and collided with a brick pillar in a suburb”

Mustaches aren’t like hair styles where there’s this unlimited number of them to choose from. There’s only like five of them out there. When Hitler went out and murdered 8 million people, he kinda reduced the options by like 20 percent. It was pretty cool when it was called the “abbreviated-stache.” Not so cool when it suddenly became “The Hitler.”

For men of my generation, you don’t miss what you’ve never had. But for those who were wearing it duringWWII? The following is a brief conversation between one of those men and his peers.

Charlie’s Boy Sits Him Down

One of his Boys: Dude, you gotta either grow it into a goatee or a full mustache, or you gotta shave it off all together.

Charlie Chaplin: Man, I’ve been rocking the abbreviated-stache since the 20’s, son.

One of his Boys, Doesn’t matter. You need to lose it.

Another One of his Boys: What about the fu manchu?

One of his Boys: Donnie, shut the fuck up. Charlie, people are heil-ing you behind your back. Believe me, you don’t need the aggravation.

The buddy cop genre. Perhaps the slipperiest slope in cinema. When casted correctly, no genre can touch it. But when miscast, you could be in for a long two hours.

There’s certain elements that are tried-and-true to the genre. Most times you’re gonna get an interracial coupling of cops. Usually black and white, but occasionally black and Jackie Chan. And they’re usually going after a drug dealer, cartel, syndicate, what have you.

As far as quality, you run the gamut. So, I’m gonna rank a few of them.

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Lethal Weapon: Pretty much the gold standard for the genre. Mel Gibson is always at his best when he’s not taking himself too seriously. Danny Glover is pretty much one of the worst actors ever. But he gets to play the tentative voice of reason who is always skeptical, the one who has to take a deep breath and say something like, “Oh what the hell,” or, “I’m getting too old for this,” before jumping off of the bridge. Fact of the matter is, the script rocked and there’s the perfect combination of violence and comedy. ✪✪✪✪✪ (Five badges).

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48 Hours: Remember when Eddie Murphy made a good movie? That was awesome. And Jack Cates is Nick Nolte’s second best role ever. His first, Coach Bell in Blue Chips. ✪✪✪✪✪

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Hank's Understudy

Turner and Hooch: This is where you begin to see how vital it is to have two strong actors in these kinds of movies. Hooch does his own stunts in the movie, which is amazing. But Tom Hanks as a cop? Puh-lease… Now, here’s what they should’ve done: replaced Tom Hanks with a dog. Two Dogs! Two dog cops hunting down the killer, and one of the dogs is real close to retirement and gets shot. Okay, I’m getting sidetracked. Not a bad movie; I’m giving it ✪✪✪✪

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Training Day: Denzel could carry a movie playing opposite the Money You Could Be Saving With Geico. Unfortunately Ethan Hawke isn’t even that good. All those scenes where Denzel is like, “Wait in the car,” my guess is that was him ad libbing. Ethan Hawke is horrible. You know it’s bad when you root for the good guy to die. But Denzel’s watershed performance makes it worth the while. ✪✪✪

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New Jack City: Some guys you buy as cops. Eastwood, definitely. Leslie Neilsen, sure, why not? Ice T and Judd Nelson… Ice T hates cops too much to be able to objectively play one. And Judd Nelson being good in anything is as rare as a cab with a license plate that says “Fresh.” Anyway, thank goodness Mario Van P kept this flick on track. It could have gone very differently. ✪✪

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Collision Course: A Detroit Cop (Jay Leno) teams up with Mr. Miyagi (Mr. Miyagi) to track down a stolen turbocharger. This movie has disaster written all over it. The logline: The only thing stopping them from solving the crime is…each other. What would you rather see: this movie, or blood in your stool? I’d love to give this one zero badges but Mr. Miyagi’s in it so… ✪

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Righteous Kill: Deniro and Pacino together again, just like the movie Heat.

Only ten years lamer. Zero invisible stars.

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I know there’s so many more… Kindergarten Cop, Red Heat, Se7en, etc. And I would love to do them all but I just saw that Cop and a Half is on TBS. Oh TBS, very funny.

I’ll admit it: I drank the Kool-Aid. I thought that, as the lights went down one final time on the set of Full House, they were simultaneously rising on the career of Andrea Barber.

I was sure we had found Julia Robert’s successor as America’s Sweetheart. Seriously, if Kimmy Gibler went public, I’d have been a majority shareholder. But then, she just fell off the country’s radar. We had forgotten about the Next Big Thing.

So, fourteen years after Full House, I went digging on the internets to see what ever became of Andrea Barber.

First Stop: Andrea’s page on IMDB.com: Noteworthy Credits: All of them, bitches. I already told you she was supposed to be America’s Sweetheart. Specifically though, Full House, and hmm, what’s this? A little film called Skateboard Kid 2 (go straight to 1:14 for the good stuff).

Next Stop: Skateboard Kid 2 page on IMDB. “12 year old Sammy takes to the skies with the help of a magical flying skateboard.” Sure, I’ll click here to read more…

Next Stop: Netflix.com. Guess what just moved to the top of my queue? See above.

Next Stop: Google.com. Woah, the second result is the “unofficial Andrea Barber Homepage!” It’s unofficial? Where’s the official Andreabarber.com? Who’s got that sweet piece of e-real estate? Surprisingly, there is no official one. One of the major oversights on the world wide web.

Next Stop: Urban Dictionary.com. Searching Kimmy Gibbler, hold please. And the results come up: “When you refuse to leave after you have a one night stand, even when they ask you nicely.” Oh, man, that ain’t right. You show America’s Sweetheart some respect.

And then I kind of hit a dead end. Some lame members.tripod fan pages, but nothing on scale with what you would expect from the Tanner’s next-door-neighbor…

Found her on Facebook; became a fan (all over again). Found her on Twitter, started following her.

But it’s all a cheap substitute for the Andrea Barber Experience that never was.

So, where to start? The dark room in which you filmed this masterpiece. Lemme guess: in your basement where you think your mom can’t hear you? She totally hears every word, Dejuanp. And her only refuge is drowning out your noise by sobbing herself to sleep. But back to the basement:

Why would you pick the darkest room in the house to film in? You don’t have a lamp down there? Then again, judging by the exposed light switch, illumination isn’t high on the priority list. Movie-making 101, lighting is key. You know what else they stress in that class:

Tripods: In the biz, they call them sticks, legs, or pods. But here’s what they DON’T call them: “forget the tripod; I’ll just use my arm.” You couldn’t set the camera down on a shelf next to the laundry detergent and dryer sheets? Going “hand-held” doesn’t refer to shooting yourself with the camera. And speaking of cameras…

What is that, an oatmeal canister with a pinhole? Oh, wait, couldn’t be; those need light. The last time I saw footage this shitty, three masked men decapitated an American soldier. New rule: No youtube posts made with cell phone cameras.

Okay, onto the performance. I’m not going to get into the costume. But unless you’re a school bus patrol officer, or you lay cones down on the highway before the night crew comes in, lose the florescent orange vest.

The “acting” isn’t that bad, I guess. But I lost a lot of the power of your delivery in the overall embarrassment I felt for you as I squirmed through this atrocity you call a video. And I’m not quite sure what you were trying to achieve here. I mean, I’m no casting agent, but here’s something I’m guessing that NONE of them say all the time: “I’m just digging through youtube looking for the next Brando.”

Here’s the thing, Dejaunp. I can find the real scene on youtube. In fact, that’s what I was looking for before I walked out in front of this train wreck. Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall playing different characters in different costumes with a production budget is awesome. You in the basement with a camera and some ear buds (why the ear buds, Dejaunp, why the earbuds?) licks my balls. Seriously.

I especially loved the end of the video where… okay, I’m totally lying. I couldn’t get through thirty seconds of this thing.

And for those you who have never seen Coming to America and are all, “I didn’t think Dejaunp, was thaaat bad,” here’s what the scene is supposed to look like.